You drove here, after all. You are
not tired? What should you say, first, to a walk with me?"
A staid-looking, exquisitely neat, elderly woman brought her bonnet,
umbrella, gloves, and a large Scotch plaid shawl, in which she wrapped
Miss Dudley, with much solicitude, and was so prettily thanked for her
pains that I longed to have the wrapping up to do myself.
"I really do not think I needed to be muffled up quite so closely
to-day," said my hostess, as she stepped lightly from the piazza to the
sunlit gravel-walk; "but Bonner is ten years older than I, and feels the
cold a good deal herself, and I do not like to make her anxious about
me. She had a great fright, poor thing! when I was ill. Where shall we
go, Miss Morne?--to the garden or the shore? I am not certain that those
clouds mean to give us time for both."
Not knowing which she would prefer, I answered that I could hardly
choose, unless she would be so kind as to tell me which was the most
beautiful. To my joy, she said the shore. The path ran close to the
edge of the cliffs; and below our very feet were the beach and the
breakers. We both forgot ourselves at first, I think, in the sight and
sound.
At length she turned, with a sudden movement, and looked me in the face.
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